


Broken Glass

by orangina



Series: Lab Safety Verse [3]
Category: Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, M/M, Memories, Sequel, They're graduated now, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-31
Updated: 2016-03-31
Packaged: 2018-05-30 10:17:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6419818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orangina/pseuds/orangina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A little over two years after Mats and Benedikt were assigned to do a chemistry project together, things are different.</p><p>Sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/2649941/chapters/5919416">Lab Safety</a> and <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/3582072/chapters/7897401">Into the Wild</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Broken Glass

**Author's Note:**

> I posted this, deleted it, and am now reposting in. I'll explain in the end notes.
> 
> Once again: I'm sorry.

From: Mats  
Hey Benni

From: Mats  
I really wanna talk to you

Benedikt looked at the messages and sighed. They’d been sent nearly 10 minutes ago. He could ignore them just as he’d done with the previous handful of messages Mats had sent him, all over a year ago. Indeed he would probably do just that. He had nothing to do with Mats anymore. He’d moved on with his life, and so it appeared had Mats - at least for a while.

They had officially broken up the summer before their senior year of high school, not incredibly long after a disastrous camping trip that had revealed everything that was wrong with themselves and their relationship. Mats went ballistic. It was bad enough that Benedikt stopped fearing for his safety only when his ex-boyfriend was hospitalized.

Mats had wanted him to visit. Benedikt didn’t.

It was a bad ending to a bad relationship. But weeks passed, the number of texts he was receiving from his ex slowed down and eventually stopped, and Benedikt learned to love himself again.

So why should he turn back now? He was a freshman in college, and having been at school for about three months now, was finally getting past the initial homesickness and feeling at home on campus. He loved college. He loved his friends there and his dorm-mates, the parties and the social atmosphere; fraternities were rushing freshmen next semester, and Benedikt was in serious consideration of participating. He didn’t love all the papers he had to write and the pages and pages of reading, or the fact that his grades were not quite what they were in high school (which had initially freaked him out), but that was all a part of the bonding experience.

Point is, he had moved on from Mats. That was all in the past. He’d learned from his mistakes and as a result was a wiser, more confident person.

He was in the dining hall now, with a plate of pizza and iceberg lettuce before him and his phone in his lap. Stabbing lettuce onto his fork with one hand, he used the other to open up Mats’ messages for what felt like the millionth time since they arrived.

_I really wanna talk you_

Admittedly, Benedikt was kind of curious as to what Mats had to say to him a year after everything had blown over. So, against all his instincts that were telling him it was a terrible idea to bring up all that shit again, he responded.

To: Mats  
Hi Mats..long time no chat.

The response came quicker than Benedikt was prepared for.

From: Mats  
I’m getting really bad again

Benedikt’s heart pounded. All of a sudden, he wasn’t so hungry for the rubbery pizza he’d initially craved. He knew that Mats was bound to relapse at some point, but why would Mats contact _him_? Benedikt knew he shouldn’t be flattered, but it was undeniable that he was. A part of him still cared deeply for Mats, wished that the Mats he thought he’d known was the Mats he did know. The good moments he shared with Mats almost made up for all the bad ones. Almost. Until one incident tipped him over the edge, and he realized that no matter what kind of true lust or love they shared, it wasn’t an excuse. Mats was abusive from the beginning and it only ever got worse.

The beginning of the incident that tipped Benedikt over the edge occurred at a party thrown by Marco Reus. High school parties are where plenty of memories are formed, memories of your best friend causing a nightmarish commotion by shitting on the floor at IHOP and memories of making out in a twisted fit with your crush in the dead of the night - for those that could remember, at least. And unfortunately, Benedikt remembered everything that happened that night clear as day.

After Mats’ third drink, it was clear that he wasn’t planning on stopping and maybe had never really planned on stopping in the first place. But things in the relationship were already rough at that point and Benedikt was stubborn, so he didn’t intervene until Mats passed out and he turned him onto his side so he wouldn’t choke on whatever came up.

A couple days after when Mats had fully recovered and found out what happened, he threw a fit and started punching every inch of Benedikt that he could reach.

Fifteen minutes later, they stood together at the sink, Mats pressing a damp washcloth to his then-boyfriend’s mouth to catch the blood.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and not for the first time.

Benedikt didn’t say anything - perhaps because his voice would’ve been muffled into the cloth anyway, or because it hurt too much to try and talk. But his eyes said more than enough. There was so much sadness in his eyes that even after the beating he’d just taken, his feelings probably hurt more than his body did.

“I love you,” Mats said to change things up a little. And he did. He really did. After all, he wouldn’t bother being mad about something he didn’t care about, right? This was just evidence that he cared about his relationship with Benedikt, as gruesome as it was. If he didn’t care, he could just walk away from it like it never even happened.

“Yeah, right.”

“I do, Benedikt,” Mats shot back, more angrily than he’d anticipated.

Again, Benedikt said nothing.

Meanwhile, Mats rinsed off the washcloth in the sink, watching the blood run down the drain, diluted with water. He made sure the water was warm but not too hot, then pressed the cloth gently to Benni’s mouth once more.

When Benedikt started shaking, Mats took him to the couch and lay him down, taking him into his arms and dropping kisses onto his hair and forehead.

“Why do you do this to me?”

Benedikt was sobbing, tears sticking to his flushed face.

“Because I love you. I know that sounds crazy, but I do, I promise. You mean so much to me. I don’t know what I’d do if you ever broke up with me, probably kill myself. You just piss me off sometimes, and the reason I get like this is because I care,” Mats explained.

“I want to go home,” Benedikt said quietly, almost fearfully.

He didn’t want to be anywhere near Mats right now. He wasn’t attracted to him in that moment. Come to think of it, he was quite repulsed by everything that had just happened and been happening.

“Okay, can we hang out later?”

“Maybe. I just wanna sleep.”

“You can sleep here.”

“Please just take me home.”

“Fine. Get in the car,” Mats huffed, pushing Benedikt off of him and getting up to grab his keys.

When Benedikt woke up from his nap, he lay there for a few moments, looking up at the ceiling and trying to remember why he felt so bad and why his entire body ached so much. He’d needed to take sleep medicine in order to get himself to relax and stop being paranoid about Mats following him inside and strangling him with his blanket while he slept. His mouth was throbbing and tasted rusty and one of his eyes felt swollen. It didn’t take long for it to all come flooding back.

For a minute, he clung to the prospect of it all being some horrid dream, but the physical evidence was too much for that to be the case and besides, he had a text waiting for him that made it all too real.

From: Mats  
I really want to drink this, please don’t break up with me or I’ll have to

Attached was a picture of half of Mats’ face and his hand wrapped around the handle of a bottle of bleach.

That was it. That was all the abuse that Benedikt could take. In comparison to this sort of manipulative mental abuse, he almost wished he were still being punched and kicked around.

So Benedikt broke up with him - he didn’t tell Mats that of course in fear for his safety - but he decided right then and there that the relationship was done. He’d break the news to him after he was sure that Mats wouldn’t do something stupid, or that at least if he did he would be under supervision.

Over the next couple weeks, he collected all of his belongings - mostly clothes, and mostly cotton t-shirts that had been worn and washed so many times that they were soft and faded, although his stuffed dragon had somehow ended up there too - from Mats’ house. He went through his own bedroom, shoving all of Mats’ possessions in plastic bags to be taken over. He cleared their text history and deleted all their photos. Then he threw away everything else that reminded him of Mats, all the letters both silly and serious and the math homework that they’d doodled relentlessly all over and the ticket from the first movie they went to see together, until there was nothing left.

The one thing he kept was the jacket that Mats had been wearing when they’d first been assigned to do that project together. Not because he wanted the keepsake, but because it had changed allegiance and become Benedikt’s own.

\---

To: Mats  
Let me go back to my room then we can talk

Benedikt cleared his plate having only taken two bites of his pizza. He usually felt guilty when his eyes were bigger than his stomach and he got more food than he could eat so that it went to waste, and he felt bad for whoever was back there taking care of the dirty dishes of hundreds of hungry college students. But this evening he couldn’t be bothered. There was a strange, floating sensation in his head and chest as he walked back to his dorm.

He knew that he was giving in and that he shouldn’t be doing this, but the temptation was too strong to resist.

Once he’d made it to his room, he dropped his backpack in the corner and climbed up onto his unmade bed, already preparing to call Mats before he’d even made himself comfortable.

The ringing stopped and he heard background noises, but Mats didn’t greet him.

“Mats.”

“Yeah.”

That familiar voice sent a swell of longing down to Benedikt’s belly. He hadn’t heard it in so long… He’d forgotten how calming it could be.

“What do you mean you’re getting bad again?” he urged. He was stretched across the bed now, his ankles crossed, pulling at a stray thread in the stitching of his comforter with his free hand that wasn’t holding his phone tightly against his ear.

His roommate was out, no one was in the lounge, and the room was darkening and he hadn’t bothered to switch the light on, all factors which contributed to the sort of lonely feeling Benedikt was getting from this conversation. He could still hear the vague background noise from the other end of the line, but other than that, there wasn’t much going on besides the sound of the mini refrigerator running, reminding Benedikt that he had to use up the last of his milk tomorrow morning before it went bad.

“You okay?” he asked when Mats didn’t say anything.

“I just really wanna talk to you,” Mats said, frantically but rather flatly.

“Why? We haven’t talked in years, Mats, and we definitely didn’t end on a good note.”

“I know, and that’s why I wanted to talk because I was reading our texts and I saw that picture you sent me when you were eating a bagel.”

“What picture… Why did you wanna talk to me? What’s going on?”

“I was just in the park with my brother.”

Benedikt hesitated. He hoped that he hadn’t really heard what he thought he’d just heard.

“What are you talking about?” he asked cautiously.

“You wouldn’t understand because you don’t have a brother,” Mats continued.

“Where are you?” Benedikt demanded.

“I’m at home.”

“With your parents?”

“And my brother.”

“Okay… Are you safe? I’m worried about you. You’re not making sense right now.” There was a lump in Benedikt’s throat now. Mats was slipping away from reality again.

“I’m fine.”

“This is really weird. Do your parents know how you’ve been?”

“Yeah, I tried to kill myself again,” Mats said emotionlessly.

Benedikt was finding it hard to contain the urge to cry. It was scary how expressionless Mats sounded, and how he didn’t seem to think there was a big problem with him just calling his ex up after over a year as if they’d just broken it off due to friendly differences.

“Did you go to the hospital?”

“I love you, Benni. I miss you so much. I know we’re not together anymore but I just feel really close to you right now for some reason.”

“You need to go talk to your parents,” Benedikt said, trying to keep his voice calm. “I don’t want you to get any further from reality than you already are.”

“Can we talk?”

“Oh god… I don’t know you. This is weird. We’re not in eleventh grade anymore. I have a totally different life now. There’s no way that I can help you, so can you please go talk to your parents? Please?” Benedikt begged.

The fridge had stopped buzzing now, and his dorm room was lonelier than ever.

“I can’t, I just wanna talk to you,” Mats repeated.

“I… I don’t think that’s a good idea. I don’t think we should stay in touch. Please stay safe and try and get better, you’re clearly not in a good place right now.”

“You already said that before, I still have the messages from then.”

“I’m so confused. You’re not making any sense, you come to me out of nowhere and I don’t understand what you want. I have to go study now. Goodbye, Mats. And please try and help yourself, for Christ’s sake.”

Benedikt hung up, flung his phone to the foot of his bed, then curled up and started heaving.

He should never have responded to Mats in the first place. There was nothing good that could’ve come out of it. Mats couldn’t have seriously wanted him back; his mental state was too out of touch. And even if he had, it would’ve been unrequited. Benedikt was done with all of that.

He wiped his eyes roughly on his sheets, trying to get control of himself in case his roommate walked in, but gave up when the tears just pooled right back up.

He didn’t miss Mats or their god awful relationship in the slightest. He just hated the fact that Mats was still like this and that there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.

\---

Benni had hung up on him.

Mats shrugged, then he put on his coat and went out onto the porch. He sat down on the steps, where his brother had been waiting for him.

“He didn’t wanna talk,” Mats said.

“What did you say?”

“I told him that I was sorry and that I’m trying to get better for him.”

“And what did he say?”

Mats was having trouble remembering. What _had_ Benni said to him?

“Did you ask him how he was doing?”

“I didn’t need to. He’s fine and happy. I’m not.”

“You shouldn’t have treated him so badly,” Jonas pointed out. “He gave up so much for you. He really did care about you, but you blew it.”

“I know! Shut up and stop reminding me,” Mats snapped. He didn’t want to talk to his brother anymore, so he leapt to his feet and down the long pathway leading down the slope of the front lawn out onto the street.

Inside, his dad was looking worriedly out the window. He’d heard Mats talking again, presumably to himself but he knew better than that. No one else could hear the voices that Mats heard, but the doctors had explained that it was real to Mats, that he did experience a physical sound as if an actual person were talking to him.

If he wandered too far, then Mr. Hummels would be sure to go out and coax him back inside. But it was fine for now. It was good for him to be getting some fresh air, and good for the rest of the family to have a little break from him, too.

\---

_“Why do you make yourself vomit? You’re destroying yourself.”_

_“Why do you take drugs? You’re destroying yourself.”_

_This was the argument that had resumed after Mats had heard Benni puking for the second time that week. As it first started happening, he’d believed Benni when he’d attributed it to a stomach bug. But Benni seemed awfully capable of participating in track workouts for someone who should’ve been crippled by nausea, and stomach bugs weren’t supposed to last weeks on end in an otherwise healthy person._

_“I don’t_ take drugs. I do _drugs,” Mats shot back as if this were a solid point of argument._

 _“Piss off. You don’t give a shit about me. You don’t care that I’m hurting, all you care about is yourself! You abuse me when you feel bad about yourself and then make everything better by writing me love letters and kissing me. I’m so tired of it, I just want you to_ respect _me.”_

_“Well if you understood that you’re not the only one in the world with problems, maybe you’d be able to see why I do what I do,” Mats retorted._

_“There’s no excuse for what you do! Normal people can be angry without calling people names and shoving them and threatening them and blaming them for everything,” said Benedikt as he reached into the cabinet for a glass of water. All of this vomiting was leaving a sick, rough texture in the back of his throat that almost made him want to throw up for real._

_Glaring heavily at Mats all the while, Benni filled up the glass, turned the sink off, then took a sip which he swished around in his mouth before spitting it back out._

_“Benni.”_

_He was too busy gulping down water to answer, but looked up over the rim of the glass expectantly._

_“I’m sorry. You’re right. But what you’re doing isn’t okay and you need to stop,” Mats said. He leaned against the counter and folded his arms._

_“I don’t do it all the time,” Benni said pathetically, setting down his glass._

_“Baby…”_

_“What?”_

_“Come here.”_

_Benni walked into Mats’ arms and fell into him, head on his shoulder, inhaling his scent, while Mats held him tight and close._

_“If you can’t stop by yourself then you need to get help,” Mats muttered._

_“I’ll stop,” Benni said._

_“Good. It just kills me to see you doing this to yourself. You don’t need to. You’re beautiful.”_

_Benni lifted his head, as if seeking verification of the last comment. Mats took his face between his hands, traced his lips with his thumb. They were dry and cracked and sticky, so unlike the lips that Mats were used to kissing. But he tilted his head and kissed Benni anyway, slowly, so that Benni could be sure that this wasn’t a fluke._

_He tasted vomit. Or maybe it was just his imagination playing tricks on him knowing what Benni had just been doing in the bathroom. Either way, he couldn’t stand it anymore and had to pull away abruptly._

_“Let’s go for a walk,” Mats suggested as he began stroking Benni’s hair back from his face to make up for interrupting their kiss. He reached for Benni’s hand, squeezing it hard, and pulled him outside, where the sun was shining and everything was perfect and forgiving._

_“I love you so much,” Benni said._

_“I know,” Mats replied._

_The park was overflowing with young children when they got there, but they went to the swingset anyway, racing for the one open swing as if they too weren’t 17 years old and soon to enter the summer before their senior year of high school._

_Benni got there first, laughing gleefully._

_“If that’s how you want it then,” Mats said teasingly, sitting down on Benni’s lap and causing him to laugh even harder._

_“I can’t_ breathe _!”_

_“You wouldn’t be talking then, silly,” Mats said, twisting around to poke the tip of Benni’s nose. Then he kicked off the ground, trying to get a rhythm going on the swing, but they were too heavy, and neither of them could pump because their legs just got in the way of one another, so Mats just ended up slipping off dramatically into the mulch, much to the amusement of Benni._

_“Push me,” Benni demanded once Mats had gotten back to his feet, adjusted his glasses and brushed most of the mulch off his clothes._

_Mats couldn’t complain. The smile on Benni’s face was worth it, his eyes squinting against the sun and his hair blowing lightly back and forth. Still, he couldn’t help but feel worried about the next push on Benni’s back being the one that sent him flying off the swing. Benni didn’t feel as sturdy as he usually did. Instead, he felt weak and fragile, as if he may as well just collapse right then and there._

_They left the playground eventually, probably to the relief of all the moms who didn’t appreciate two teenage lovebirds taking up the equipment and acting like fools, and continued to make their way through the neighborhood. Mats’ heart was beating ridiculously fast; he cupped his hand over his breast as if to ensure that it wasn’t going to fly out, and Benni placed his own hand over Mats’, protecting his heart even more._

_The sun was so hot. All of a sudden, the heat was too thick around Mats’ body, choking him, enclosing him. It was too hot, too bright, to be anything other than heaven._

\---

“Can I take the car?” Mats asked his dad once he’d gone back inside after growing tired of his brother bugging him.

“Fine,” his dad replied, utterly defeated and tired and everything in between. He’d been reading a book but set it down on the coffee table as soon as Mats walked into the house, rubbing his face exhaustedly. Mrs. Hummels was upstairs reading with Kira; Mr. Hummels had been put on Mats-duty, the least desirable chore in the household due to the fact that it shouldn’t have had to be a chore at all because 18-year-olds are supposed to be away at college and growing up.

“Take your phone. And I want you back here in ten minutes,” he added, only because it sounded like he was doing a good job enforcing Mats’ constant supervision. Ten minutes was more than enough time for Mats to endanger himself.

Meanwhile, Mats had taken his glasses off to wipe them on his shirt. He squinted at the cover of the book his dad had been reading. He couldn’t see it very well, but really didn’t need to in order to conclude that it was another one of those books about what to do when your adult child has a mental illness. It made Mats sad. It wasn’t his fault that he saw and heard things that weren’t there; sometimes they were harmless, even positive, but other times they were evil and frightening and drove him to madness, encouraging him to hurt or kill himself.

“Love you, dad,” Mats said before racing out the front door before he could change his mind. He knew where he was going.

When he got there, he slid against the cold brick wall in the parking lot, vividly recalling the time he’d been here with Benni and a package of gummy worms while the sun rose. He thought about Benni a lot, but today in particular he just couldn’t get the blond boy off his mind. It was like Benni was right there in his life all over again. But coming back here without Benni was like a cold snatch right back into reality - Benni wasn’t in his life anymore, and he wasn’t coming back because he had moved on. Mats could live in the past as much as he wanted, but it wouldn’t be the same when the most important thing that had been his was gone.

He loved Benni with all of his heart.

 _I should just kill myself,_ he thought. If he did it tonight, then it would be his own choice, not the demons that haunted his head. He couldn’t fix himself for Benni. What evidence was there to believe that he’d ever fix himself for anyone else? He was doomed to spend his whole life in illusion and misery. There was no point to prolonging a life like that. He hurt others, and he himself wasn’t happy - maybe those two phenomena were interlinked, reversible, an unbreakable cycle. So why was he still living and breathing? Why was it that the universe was still locking him in this torture and allowing him to torture others?

Mats decided that tonight was the night he was going to end it once and for all. There was so much beauty in the world that he would never enjoy because his mind wouldn’t let him, no matter how much he wanted to.

_Do it._

_You are worthless._

_You deserve nothing._

_Don’t be afraid. Kill yourself. I will guide you through it. Just do as I say._

To: Benni  
Benni please I know that you moved on but they won’t stop and I can’t focus on anything

To: Benni  
Please, there are three different voices, there’s a woman who sounds like those announcers on trains and buses and she keeps telling me what to do, then there’s a monster, then there’s a child. The child is the worst, it’s evil. The monster is nice. The woman just tells me what other people are thinking. It gets annoying because it’s like I’m having someone else’s stream of consciousness other than my own, but it’s okay

To: Benni  
Benni you have to talk to me

No answer.

 _Go home to your family,_ said the monster.

 _Come play with me,_ said Jonas.

Mats let the voices carry him away. He didn’t know where he was going, just that he wasn’t himself right now. He had lost whatever little control he had had left. He’d let them take him wherever they wanted to.

\---

_“Are you seriously gonna use that as an excuse every time I wanna go somewhere with you?”_

_“Mats. I care about my grades. I want to get into college. I want to have a future.”_

_“You never wanna spend any time with me. We never spend any time together anymore, and you have an excuse every single fucking time - you have homework, you have to workout, you have plans with your parents, whatever - ”_

_“Because we just fight the whole time! That’s why I don’t wanna spend time with you!”_

_“Oh, I fucking wonder why. Maybe it’s because you’re the one who picks a fight with me every chance you get.”_

_“Why are you so mean to me?!”_

_“Why are_ you _so mean to_ me _? And why are you so annoying?”_

_“God, just leave me alone!”_

_“Boo-hoo. Shut up, Benni. You’re the worst piece of shit boyfriend anyone could ever have.”_

\---

From: Benni  
Just try and relax and get some sleep. Please don’t text me anymore.

To: Benni  
I need you

From: Benni  
No you don’t need me. What you need is to get better. I couldn’t be the one to magically solve all your problems back then and I can’t now. I’m only one person and I’m not perfect. You’re in a bad place, and like I said, I am unable to help you in any shape or form. Now please stop texting me or I’ll have your number blocked. I’m sorry, but you had your chance, you hurt and abused me time after time, and I refuse to let that happen to me ever again. Goodbye Mats. I really hope you feel better. I mean that

\---

_Ever since his mom had brought him the first Harry Potter book to read when he had been admitted to the hospital, Mats began loving to read. It was an escape. It was a way that he could avoid his health and responsibilities while still feeling wholesome and productive. And in some cases, it was a distraction - unless something in the story reminded him of his own life and he ended up setting the book face down, open to the last page he’d been on, and staring into the distance, letting waves of anxiety get the better of him._

_His favorite book was_ We All Fall Down _. He read it once, and then he put it in his t-shirt drawer for safekeeping. He also loved_ 12 Angry Men _, although that was technically a play so he couldn’t include it on his list of favorite books._

_But Mats didn’t read anymore these days. In fact, he didn’t do much of anything besides fervently pacing the same route over and over again, being reminded by his parents to take his medicine, and subsequently not taking it, which led to a whole new array of behaviors._

_He knew that he could get better. It was possible. It was never impossible to not get better. He just didn’t want to because he didn’t see the point. Even if things got better, they would never be the way he wanted them to be. So what was the point of going at all if you couldn’t go all the way? Sounded like a waste of effort to him._

_It was easier, so much easier, to be bad._

\---

Benedikt was happy.

Once you love someone, you never really stop loving them. If you stopped loving them, he figured, then you never really loved them in the first place. It was hard for him to say whether he’d ever really loved Mats or not. Maybe he had. But if he did, it had only been a tiny, tiny bit. Still. It was there. That tiny little drop of love. And it would always be there - if, in fact, it was.

He was happy, though.

Robert was the opposite of him in every way imaginable. His dark hair clashed with Benedikt’s strawberry-blond wisps. His clear eyes had the power of enrapturing Benedikt’s dense hazel ones. And his skin, so pale, so smooth, felt amazing against Benedikt’s, whose own freckled, sensitive skin was far from perfect. This became evident whenever they were pressed up against one another because he knew that whatever imperfections were felt as they slid across each other were his.

Mats’ skin hadn’t been perfect either. While he’d only ever had a few spots pop up here and there, his pores were very oily, causing his skin to shine. Especially when he got worked up.

Benedikt was kissing Robert right now, their mouths and tongues and moans a hot, desperate collision. He groped for every inch of Robert’s body that he could reach, feeling tightness building up in his stomach and between his legs, and Robert did the same - out of lust or out of love, it didn’t matter because Benedikt was happy.

**Author's Note:**

> I deleted this fic because I was very upset and discouraged by the reception it got. I know that this fandom has been fizzling since the World Cup is long and gone, and I know I probably sound whiny and selfish. But I'm tired of working really hard on things, feeling proud of them, being excited to share them and then when I finally get it up it's just kinda a flop.
> 
> I don't post everything I write. I probably only post 25% of what I've written because I don't just post any junk that I shit out when I'm bored or have feels. Before I post something, I wait a few days so I can think over anything I wanna change or add, then I make sure it's edited and formatted nicely, and then I post it. If I post something, it's because I want to share it and it's just kinda disheartening when I don't get much feedback, whether that's comments or kudos or anything else.
> 
> I know that there are some people who consistently leave wonderful comments. You know who you are. Thank you. Honestly, the feedback I receive is what makes the difference between posting and not posting, writing and not writing. Feedback is what got me through Lab Safety and Clandestine Cupid. It's also why I haven't written the last chapter to Clandestine Cupid because I was too sad and unmotivated. What's the point of posting something if I could just keep it on my computer and get the exact same reception?
> 
> I'm really sorry if this sounds selfish, but all I want is to hear back from the people who read my stories. I'm reposting this now for two reasons, 1) because I'm happy with how it turned out and it's already all revised and edited, and 2) because it's not fair to the people who do enjoy my works and leave me feedback. So here we are again.
> 
> Like I explained before in the last posting of this: I felt compelled to write this because abuse is not okay and cannot be justified by someone's situation. I knew from the beginning that these two weren't gonna last, I guess I was just trying to excuse it as long as possible because it was so fun to write.
> 
> I'm not going to beg for comments anymore. I can't make anyone do anything, but I do hope you get where I'm coming from on this. Can't say how much more I'll be posting after this. Depends on how inspired I am.
> 
> Thank you for reading and if you read through all my shit blabbering too, thanks for reading that.


End file.
